Pedestal is a small, private social network running on Mastodon owned and maintained by me, Luke. The goal is to create not just a network, but a community of people sharing their interests and lives with each other. What makes Mastodon different is that each instance is owned and run by its admin(s) and can act as a much more personalized and private platform while retaining access to every other public instance through federation. (More on all the below if you’re interested)
What this means is we can build a community AND have an online social presence in the same place at the same time; visibility settings are set on a per-post basis so you can always control who sees it. Add to that that your personal data and content isn’t owned by some of the richest, most influential people/companies in the world who are mining you as a resource to sell to advertisers so that they can mine you for your time and money. Instead, I run and control the servers, owns the data, and make moderation decisions. Hopefully you trust me enough to do that responsibly. 🙂
If you’re interested in reading more about the ethos and spirit behind this project check out runyourown.social, especially the ‘Why run a small social network site?’ section.
- What is Mastodon?
- Why call it Pedestal?
- How to use Pedestal
- @Posting
- @Post Visibility
- @Public & Local Timelines
- @Finding & Following People on Other Servers
- @Dealing With Unwanted Content
- @Using Mastodon Apps
- @Cross Posting to other Socials
What is Mastodon?
And why use it?
Mastodon is an open source, distributed social network, meaning it’s not owned or controlled by any one person or company. Anyone with the skills & interest can inspect or contribute to its source code or run their own instance on their own servers. Because it’s all built on the same tech standard called ActivityPub, individual instances can communicate with each other allowing you to follow someone on another server much like how you can email someone with a yahoo.com email address from your gmail.com email. In fact, ActivityPub usernames/handles looks a lot like an email address. Mine is @luke@pedestal.social.
A few other great things about Mastodon:
🚫 No ads or creepy tracking
✅ No algorithms, feed is chronological
🥸 Owned, hosted, & maintained by someone you know
🧰 Extra tools like content/spoiler warnings on posts and feed content filters
#️⃣ Follow hashtags that interest you without following users
💬 Create Lists to group related interests or follows
🔒 Private posting to only people on the Pedestal.social server
🌎 Public posting to anyone on a Mastodon server
👀 Posts visible and sharable anywhere on the internet (public posts)
☕️ DMs with other Mastodon users
📄 (Coming soon) get your favorite blog, news site, or podcast posts in your feed
Why call it Pedestal?
Short answer: I had to come up with something and this was the best I could do.
Long answer: “Pedestal” is a simple reminder that when we post something online we’re elevating it for others to see, but it doesn’t define us. Our interests, opinions, likes, & dislikes all add richness and color to our lives and personalities. But if you take that all away, we’re each still worthy of love & respect and feeling seen. We often pay close attention to how many views, likes, comments, etc. we receive on posts and we might get defensive if someone rebuts or attacks something we said, but hopefully “Pedestal” reminds us not to take it all too seriously. At the end of the day, we can look at whatever we’ve put on the pedestal from different angles and have different views on it, but not let it come between meaningful relationships.
That’s also where the “Social” part comes in; we’re ultimately here for social connections and community around shared interests. Again, our interests, opinions, likes, & dislikes are what make up our personalities and make us interesting. The goal is for Pedestal to be a place where you and your interests can be on full display.
How to use Pedestal
The basics are no different than any other social platform but there are some unintuitive nuances and some non-obvious benefits that deserve explanation. If you’ve never used Mastodon before, it’s a good idea to read through these pages.
Posting
Post Visibility
Public & Local Timelines
Finding & Following People on Other Servers
Dealing With Unwanted Content
Using Mastodon Apps
Cross Posting to other Socials
Change log
Date Added
1/28/23 Added links for how to follow people to /quick-start page
1/22/23 Added recommended app links to /apps page Added timeline details to /timelines Began adding details to /finding-people